CPJ

2012

The imprisonment of journalists hit a record high in 2012, driven by the growing use of anti-terrorism charges to silence critical voices. This video, a centerpiece of CPJ's new Free the Press campaign, details the plight of imprisoned journalists worldwide and describes how international advocacy can make a difference in winning the freedom of jailed reporters, editors, photojournalists, and bloggers. (4:40)

The tortured
and decapitated body of 39-year-old María
Elizabeth Macías Castro was found on a Saturday evening in September
2011. It had been dumped by the side of a road in Nuevo Laredo, a Mexican
border town ravaged by the war on drugs. Macías, a freelance journalist, wrote
about organized crime on social media under the pseudonym "The Girl from Laredo." Her murder, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, was the first in which a journalist was killed in direct
relation for reporting published on social media. It remains unsolved.

Approximately 30 journalists are targeted and murdered every
year, and on average, in only three of these crimes are the killers ever brought
to justice. Other attacks on
freedom of expression occur daily: bloggers are threatened, photographers
beaten, writers kidnapped. And in those instances, justice is even more rare.
Today, the Committee to Protect Journalists joins freedom of expression
advocates worldwide in a 23-day campaign
to dismantle one case at a time a culture of impunity
that allows perpetrators to gag journalists, bloggers, photographers and
writers, while keeping the rest of us uninformed.

Last week's release
of CPJ's report on Turkey's press freedom crisis generated widespread domestic media
coverage and sparked a robust public debate. The response from Turkish journalists
and commentators was largely positive, but there were some negative reactions as
well. Turkey's Justice Ministry has promised a detailed response this week.
Here is a summary of the criticism we received during several days of intensive
media interviews, along with our responses.

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The Maria Moors Cabot Prizes, administered by Columbia
University Graduate School of Journalism in recognition of journalistic
contributions to Inter-American understanding, are the oldest international
prizes in journalism. But Josh Friedman, director of the prizes, said this year
marked the first time he remembered arriving at the awards ceremony to be
greeted by protesters screaming from behind barricades. The tuxedo and gown-clad
guests last night shot confused glances across the street from Columbia's Italian
Academy building, where about 20 protesters brandishing Ecuadoran flags and pictures of President Rafael Correa yelled
slogans like "Down the with corrupt press!" and "Long live President Correa!"
One sign identified a long list of alleged "enemies of Latin American
democracy" that managed to include the leading dailies of South America, the
United States, Spain, the Ecuadoran press freedom group Fundamedios and the Committee to Protect Journalists.

More than 40 media organizations worldwide are demanding
urgent action by governments, the United Nations, and the industry to stop
violence against journalists and end impunity in attacks on the press. They
made their position known in a joint statement
delivered today to the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO).

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Violence and legal harassment: the two greatest obstacles to
press freedom in Latin America today. That's the message that CPJ Executive
Director Joel Simon is delivering
this morning in Washington, D.C., at a briefing
hosted by Congressman Sam Farr. Farr, a California Democrat, hosts a monthly
series looking at emerging trends in the Western Hemisphere. The panel today
also includes Commissioner Dinah Shelton of the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights and Delphine Halgand of Reporters Without Borders.

The Committee to
Protect Journalists is saddened by the death of Isik Yurtçu, who died Saturday
in Istanbul of cancer at the age of 67.

In July of 1997, a bus full of international and Turkish
journalists pulled up to the plain iron gate of Sakarya Prison east of
Istanbul. Cameras rolling, representatives of CPJ, the International Press
Institute, Reporters Sans Frontieres and Turkey's Press Council and Union of Newspaper
Editors pressed toward the startled guard who swung the gate open just a foot
or two and peered out.

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Record-high temperatures swept most of Europe this summer, but
in Moscow the weather, much like the political climate, was chilly. I spent three
months in the capital at the invitation of the Russian Union of Journalists, and witnessed
how Vladimir Putin's third term in office kicked off with the passage of
restrictive laws, harassment and prosecution of dissent, the jailing of an
irreverent punk-rock band, and death threats by a top-ranking official against
a prominent editor.

The rampage inside a Colorado movie theater that killed 12
people and injured dozens more is the most recent reminder that a journalist
anywhere can face sudden, great emotional
stress. Any story involving tragedy--from domestic violence to natural
disasters--can inflict an emotional toll on field journalists. The very empathy that
makes a journalist a good storyteller puts him or her at risk.